∞ = 0

I could love my listening
I could listen to me listening
I could perform my listening
I could be my listening

– Pauline Oliveros

Open Field Listening Station is an interdisciplinary dialogue in the context of listening as an artistic practice. As a sound practitioner, the core of my practice – both as an artist and as educator – revolves around listening. Taking my cue from composer Pauline Oliveros, I consider listening a call to action: “Listening is directing attention to what is heard, gathering meaning, interpreting and deciding on action.” (Pauline Oliveros, Quantum Listening, 1999, p. 1.)

But who is listening?
And who is being heard?
What meaning is gathered?
Who decides on the action?
And what kind of action would that be?

The focus of my research was to define what listening is as an artistic practice, and how I want this practice to allow for a space where the listening becomes an agent in the making process. Through my research, I want to extend the development of the (re)emerging discipline of sound arts and to encourage the broadening and deepening of the discursive context in which listening is practiced as a form of (sound) art.

This practice-as-research equally allowed me to materialize thoughts on the qualities of listening as a method, model and metaphor for learning environments within the context of an autonomous artistic practice, to stimulate a renewed sense of attention and action.

It embraced the unpredictability and unclarity of the process, as this research is not about finding a solution to a problem. It is about creating space for the aforementioned renewed sense of attention. It is about developing the ideal notion of what Oliveros described as an ‘open field’, where the listener becomes performer and creator, and which goes on continuously, constantly questioning its action, without reaching a defined end goal. Listening is not a fixed or stationary process but needs to be done again and again.

Using listening as a design and artistic research method in itself, Open Field Listening Station provides a sonic tool for all those who would like to explore listening in their practice.